


Over-thinking

by bribitribbit



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-27
Updated: 2010-08-27
Packaged: 2017-10-11 06:46:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/109603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bribitribbit/pseuds/bribitribbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a wiggly, nervous feeling in Remus's stomach and too many thoughts are running through his mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Over-thinking

Early April, perhaps as a result of the traumatic stress of March's ides, was suffering from an identity crisis: it seemed to think itself a particularly warm summer month. Purple crocuses, having risen out of the dirt weeks ago to better hear birds' gossip of the coming season, seemed already to have tired with their bridge games and teas and were drooping sleepily along the walls of the castle. The creatures of the Forbidden Forest, awoken too early from their hibernation with false promises of rebirth and young, tasty lambs to eat, were feeling restless--if the cries and shrieks coming from the tall, thick, black wall of trees were anything to go by.

And in the midst of this sweltering chaos was Remus Lupin on the steps leading into the Owlery, trying to ignore the unhelpful wiggly, wobbly feeling in his stomach. The feeling extended--mockingly, slowly, incessantly, as if relishing its host's discomfort--through his body towards his knees, making them jerk wildly every so often, and towards his fingers, making them shake and thus incapable of doing their job. He was trying to write a letter to his mother, but scribbles that could have meant _and I read that book you sent me, thanks, Mum_ or could have meant _if pied holes ate cheese one. tank/Fun_ squiggled and shook across the parchment.

Here, Sirius wouldn't find him. Probably. Sirius never had any letters to send now.

Not, of course, that Remus was hiding from him, or avoiding him, or anything. Not really. Remus just wanted to... try to figure out things before he saw Sirius again.

He paused in his writing, considering for a moment asking his mother for advice just as he always had before--but what could he tell her? "Right, then, there's a boy in my dormitory, Sirius Black, you've met him a few times, very hilarious but sometimes I think he's missing a few hundred screws in his brain; anyway, see, yesterday, we kissed and it was quite nice and all except I'm not really sure what one does in these situations. Have any suggestions?" He could _never_ send that to his mother, and not even because she would most likely get on his case for run-on sentences.

Remus had never had this sort of trouble before. He didn't have to deal with girls (or boys, for that matter--funny how he never really thought he would ever have to deal with them in the first place), or kisses, or forgotten seventeenth-week anniversaries, or awkward, half-hearted dates under confetti-happy cupids on Valentine's Day.

He'd never actually been sure he wanted any of it. Or, well, that wasn't exactly true. There was something in him that yearned and stretched lazily but was ever so alert every time he read epic love scenes--the really good ones that stayed with you, not the ones that involved bodices ripping and throbbing sticks of manlove--and something that whispered _oh_ softly when he saw two anonymous but perfect-for-each-other Ravenclaws holding hands in the hallway. But he wasn't sure for _whom_ he wanted all that. He wasn't even sure now, not even after Sirius had said his name and kissed him and left him only a few minutes after for Quidditch practice and made Remus think so much about everything.

That was a problem of his, the thinking. He'd always been afflicted with it and he'd always hated it. Sometimes, his long hours of thinking and worrying comforted him, but there were times, like now, when it just worried him more. Surely other people did not use this much of their brains. Well, of course they didn't; he'd overheard some of the sillier girls giggling in the common room.

_I can't believe it's almost the end of school. I'll be back home soon. I've missed you both a lot; tell Dad I say hi. I love you, Mum._

He signed the letter, although it would have been difficult to tell with which name, exactly, he'd signed it. He rolled it up as he stood and whistled for the nearest owl, which flew to his shoulder and nipped his ear in what it doubtless thought was a playful manner. He could probably wear an earring now, if he really wanted to. He didn't really want to.

Remus sent the owl off with the letter and lingered for a moment, looking out the paneless windows towards the glittering lake, not quite feeling up to going back downstairs lest he run into Sirius.

And what had _prompted_ all of it, he wanted to know. Sirius was, if Remus really wanted to admit it, absolutely gorgeous. He could probably have Professor McGonagall herself if he tried (and, in fact, once or twice he had). Remus attracted sweet, cute girls too shy to make their silly, unfounded crushes known; Sirius attracted anything he really wanted to attract. Why would he want to attract Remus, anyway, bookish wet blanket that he was (at least according to Peter)? If Remus liked other boys--he still wasn't quite sure he truly did, at this point--if Remus liked other boys and he wasn't Remus but someone else, he wouldn't be able to see the appeal in himself. Thin, wiry, messy-haired, too quiet, too studious, too secretive, too strange and abnormal, too unable to _not think_ if only for a minute. He wasn't, in any way, shape, or form, desirable. So why did Sirius apparently desire him; inquiring minds _wanted to know._

He went to lean his elbows on the windowsill.

"Probably don't want to get too close to that. Birds'll just shit anywhere, won't they."

Remus closed his eyes for a millisecond before turning around. "'Lo."

Sirius grinned. "Knew you'd be up here," he said, and Remus wanted to know how. See, this was this other thing, the way Sirius _did_ know him so well, and Remus knew him so well, but it was, they were just really good friends. And, desperately, horrifyingly, Remus felt an unbidden sort of sudden desire to kiss that grin off Sirius Black's self-satisfied face. "Thinking again, aren't you, you big girl."

"Not a girl," retorted Remus on a reflex. He wasn't quite sure why he tried any more; there would always be that time he'd woken up with a hangover and a bright yellow bow tied around his hair and he'd scowled and James had said matter-of-factly, "Next time don't bring out your diary when we're supposed to be getting pissed, Moony m'dear."

"Who'd you write to?" said Sirius, hands in pockets, nodding back towards the little pot of ink sitting behind him on the steps, as he strolled towards Remus.

"My mum," replied Remus, wiggling both big toes inside his shoes, wanting the wobble in his small intestine to take a vacation in Argentina and fall in love with Buenos Aires and never come back to Remusland. "She worries, you know, if there isn't daily news. What am I eating for breakfast, did I wear socks last night when I went to bed, have I been murdered by a gaggle of mad Nifflers yet, the like."

Sirius moved as if to lean on the windowsill himself, but remembered his own advice just in time. He looked out the same window Remus had so recently been staring through. After a long pause, he said, "It's hot."

Sirius Black often states the obvious; not doing so would go against all that he is: in himself a statement of obviousness.

Remus frowned, letting this sink in although it had already sunk well and deep, like an old man's childhood mattress, and had been sunk in for seven years.

"It is hot," replied Remus carefully. What was he supposed to say, what was he supposed to _think_ when Sirius skipped Ancient Runes to come and find him up on the Owlery, one of the few places in Hogwarts not hallowed by Sirius's constant presence?

_God._ He wanted his brain to accompany his small intestine on its trip.  
"Moony, if you're not all right with it," said Sirius, looking up.

"No," said Remus, panicky and wiggly and wobbly and itchy-toed. "It's all right."

"Okay," and Sirius stepped towards him. And smiled. And kissed that skin between Remus's eyelashes and cheekbone that didn't really qualify as being part of the cheek, and then kissed Remus's lips and what was he supposed to--oh. _Oh._

Oh, Remus was so over over-thinking.

_   
**Over-thinking**   
_

**Author's Note:**

> This was beta-ed by the ever so lovely [](http://mysticblueside.livejournal.com/profile)[**mysticblueside**](http://mysticblueside.livejournal.com/), who used green in her notes. Clearly, she is awesome.


End file.
